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Thor Hansen is a genius. He’s a great writer, scientist and naturalist. This is his expansive masterpiece about all things feathers. I highly recommend, enjoyable and educational.
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One of the most memorable and fascinating books I have read in a while. This is about, among other things, early 20th century explorer and scientist William Beebe’s adventures and exploits in exploring the unseen deep ocean and witnessing all its strange life forms in a bathysphere, as well as stories about his contemporaries/friends of the era and general musings on the nature of exploration. Chapters are not always linear and include his logbook entries and illustrations, they’re no more than 2-3 pages at a time, capturing vivid vignettes and creating an almost dream like type of prose, much like the wonder and awe Beebe must have experienced seeing all of this himself- it’s far from a dry scientific account- the author Brad Fox has truly done something special here. Really cannot do it justice so check it out yourself to see.
Sep 11, 2024
Really interesting interdisciplinary speculative science book about the development of human intelligence, written in a lovely prosaic voice that makes it accessible to and engaging for anyone. There have been significant scientific advancements that add nuance and complexity to some of the ideas he discusses but it’s still useful as a conceptual framework for understanding and it’s interesting to see the conclusions he was able to draw with his brilliant mind based off of the limited information that was available at the time. He raises a lot of thought provoking questions—its greatest value is as a philosophical text—and I think it’s still more than worth your time to read today.
“As a consequence of the enormous social and technological changes of the last few centuries, the world is not working well. We do not live in traditional and static societies. But our government, in resisting change, act as if we did. Unless we destroy ourselves utterly, the future belongs to those societies that, while not ignoring the reptilian and mammalian parts of our being, enable the characteristically human components of our nature to flourish; to those societies that encourage diversity rather than conformity; to those societies willing to invest resources in a variety of social, political, economic and cultural experiments, and prepared to sacrifice short-term advantage for long-term benefit; to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future.”
Jan 14, 2025
I don't remember if I've read the whole thing so this is not an endorsement of it. Anyway it's pretty interesting. It's about biology but written for an interested, but not necessarily trailed, audience.
Nov 26, 2024
Top Recs from @conor
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This is a super-duper moisturizer that my girlfriend introduced me to. I have always had really dry skin and nothing has worked as well as this cream. I think it’s Korean so I can’t read all the ingredients but I think its dope.
Nov 14, 2023
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I missed the Wii craze first time around but recently got introduced to it by some friends. It’s so fun I can’t stop playing but it’s best when you have 4 people. It’s a great substitute for pickle ball in the winter.
Nov 14, 2023
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Weirdly another video game reference. I truly have never been that into video games but I really like this animated series on Netflix. I have never played League of Legends but I don’t think that matters. Its just a really well written, engaging series that is candy for the eyes.
Nov 14, 2023